Our second Artist of the Week Spotlight features a true legend: Nick Muir. Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the past 15+ years, the name Nick Muir isnt unfamiliar. Not only is Nick Muir one-half of bedrock (the other one being a fellow that goes by the name of John Digweed, perhaps you’ve heard of him), Nick is responsible for such movie score classics such as Trainspotting and Stark Raving Mad, to name just a few.

FRISKY: How did you get into djing?
Nick Muir: I always thought of myself as more of a musician/producer than a DJ. I was a professional session keyboard player for years and the idea of playing a set behind decks didn’t appeal - to be honest I was having such a great time going to parties and listening to other DJs that
I stuck to doing that! However when the technology improved and Ableton software came out, the opportunity to play some tunes and
twist them up was too great and I started playing some sets.

I did used to do a live thing which involved taking more or less the whole studio out and setting it up at a club. Then one
day a couple of years ago I did a gig with Charlie May (of Spooky/Sasha fame) and while I was struggling with a truckload of equipment
he took his laptop and controller out of a backpack and was ready to play in 5 minutes! The penny dropped…

FRISKY: You did a lot of scores for movies and tvshows. Anything big or interesting coming up soon the fans should know about?
Nick: As i write John and I have a project ready to go which is different to anything we’ve done before; and that, I’m afraid, is all I can tell you! I risk death at the hands of Diggers if I reveal any more - sorry.

Anytime we’ve contributed soundtrack we’ve enjoyed it and it’s worked out well - obviously if the right project came up we’d consider it but it’s
becoming a little bit of a cliche that people in our position are looking to make soundtracks. Everyone seems to be angling for it, so we’re not
holding our breath. Of course because we’re known for dance music then any offers seem to be slightly biased towards that area but it would
be great to step outside the genre. I work with a small production company that requires soundtrack from time to time which can be anything
from world music to full blown orchestral - it’s great work to do, challenging and I enjoy coming up with something just when they think they’ve got
me stumped!

FRISKY: Do you approach the production of a movie/tv score differently than any other ‘club’ track?
Nick: There are similarities; coming up with a successful musical arrangement is key to both disciplines, getting the energy flow right is important too, you have
to make it sound natural, even when you’re working with totally electronic sources.

The big difference is that you rarely work to a steady unchanging pulse when you’re writing to a scene (although that can be made to work well)
and the pulse is what club tracks are all about of course. But within a club mix its common to get the intensity to rise and fall which you also do with soundtrack, but the level of subtlety you sometimes employ with a score you will rarely hear in a club mix. Not in mine anyway, they’re a right racket normally!

FRISKY: You are one half of the legendary Bedrock duo with John Digweed, how did you guys meet, why the name bedrock and who came up with that name?
Nick: We met through a mutual friend of ours, the saxophone player Simeon Jones. Simeon and I were in a touring band together and knowing I was into the dance music scene,
he introduced me to John who he’d met in the Austrian alps during the ski-ing season; Simmy was in the resident band and John was DJ-ing there. We made contact, next thing I knew John turned up at the studio and we were writing a track!

‘For What You Dream Of’

After we wrote ‘For What You Dream Of’ we were looking for a name (I remember ‘Oddjob’ was one of the names that came up, haha) but John was already running a night called Bedrock, I believe he borrowed the name from a Chicago nightclub, which, legend has it, had a volcano that they somehow rigged up in the club which actually used to erupt! I thought it was a pretty cool name which also meant something to people who had seen John play.

FRISKY: What is the craziest place you partied?
Nick: I remember these guys who used to hold raves in unlikely venues and one time they managed to get into a shipbreakers yard and set up in the rusting hull of an old ship! it was a very cool place - but it sounded like shit.

FRISKY: What can we expect from Nick Muir and or Bedrock in the future?
Nick: There’s lots of things I’d like to do, whether or not I’ll get the chance is another matter. I’m interested in sound systems and would like to experiment with how music is relayed in a space. We’re on good terms with the guys at Funktion One and I’m hoping we may do some work with them at some point.

I would like to make more albums, not something we’ve done a lot of over the years, as the compilation is more the medium in which DJs tend to work - also the internet is still in its infancy and is going to continue to evolve. Its going to be massive and all encompassing - I think traditional broadcast radio has had its golden era and stations like Frisky are the future. People are going to make great things for the web. It’s going to be awesome. It already is.

FRISKY: If Simon Cowell asked you to be a judge in his rumored DJ-Idol competition, what would you say to him?”
Nick: Look I’m sure Simon Cowell is actually an OK guy but of course the very idea of DJ-idol strikes terror into the heart of any true lover of club music. If he asked me to be a judge, firstly I’d pick myself up off the floor, then I would accept on the basis he paid me an obscenely large amount of money with which I could throw some proper parties and help a few people that really need it with anything left over.

FRISKY: What do you think of the current debate thats going on about the the alleged over-commercialisation of dance music? Good or bad? Whats your take on it?
Nick: I’ve been working in dance music for a long time now and the debate has been going on as long as I can remember. If you’ve got a scene a bunch of people like then someone’s going to try and exploit it, which I haven’t necessarily got a problem with. If you’re going to make money then there will always have to be a bit of that.

Also, while the focus of attention is on the latest cheesy dance spectacular it gives the underground dance scene a chance to breathe a bit and to re-position itself exactly where it should be - underground.

FRISKY: If you were to play your last gig ever: Where would it be and what track would you play to close it out?
Nick: Ah well, there’s a question. As far as I’m concerned Space in Ibiza is just about the best club in the world (although if you could re-open Twilo that might nick it) so maybe there - I might play Born Slippy/Underworld - so many memories, its a whole lifetime in one track - plus the opening riff is my wifes ringtone!

Underworld - Born Slippy

Nick Muir - Official website.

Nick Muir - FRISKY Artist of the Week airs Tuesday July 31 at 11AM Los Angeles / 02PM New York / 08PM CET on friskyRadio.com

We’re starting something new for 2012. Hoping to bring you closer to the artists that we feature as our Artist of the Week, we will accompany the exclusive artist mix with a short interview, called Spotlight. And we’re starting with international mega rock star DJ Quivver! We at FRISKY have been a fan of his ever since his Transport 5 mix album back in 2001 and its a pleasure to feature him with our first ever FRISKY Artist of the Week Spotlight.

FRISKY: Why “Quivver”? How did you come up with the moniker?
QUIVVER: No big story really, we needed a band name - there was 2 of us originally, myself and Neil Barry (we split after the 2nd single). We wanted to call ourselves shivver but there was already a band called shiva who were big at the time so we went with quivver.

FRISKY: The last 10 years has seen a lot of technological changes in every aspect of life. How do you see DJ’ing changing in say the next 20 years? Are we going to dancing to the beat of cyborg DJs?
QUIVVER: Yeah it wouldn’t surprise me , or maybe 3D holographic projections like black eyed peas did last year at the NRJ awards. Then every big club in the world could just pay david guetta to use his hologram and everyone would be happy!!

… We pause for a moment to try and get the visual Quivver has just painted for us. OK pausing is not working. Here’s a video of a recent release by Quivver featured on Ibiza 2011 Vol 2 compilation released this past August:

FRISKY: OK, that helped. Whats in the pipeline in your production or DJ career? What should Quivver fans reading this be aware of and look out for?
QUIVVER: I just finished a big vocal track for toolroom called ‘i don’t wanna wait’ which i’m really, really happy with - it features great vocalist called angel hart who i randomly heard when i opened my studio window one afternoon. she’s a vocal coach and her studio is in the same building as mine so i wandered round the building till i found her.

There’s also new single ‘here’s this’ coming out soon on microcastle and a 3 track e.p on great stuff.

Radio edit and music video for “Happy” on Raid Recordings

FRISKY: Whats your favourite club in the world to play in?
QUIVVER: There’s a few but recently my favourite gigs were at Avalon in LA and Pacha in Buenos Aires.

FRISKY: What are you most proud of in your professional (or personal) life? Could be anything - a release, a tour, your pet chihuahua.
QUIVVER: in that case i’d have to say my daughter Charlie, she just turned 2 and is a constant source of joy

FRISKY: What country has the frisky-ist crowds?
QUIVVER: Argentina! i love playing there, proper party people!

FRISKY: Absolutely, some of our most enthusiastic fans are from there. If you could pick a place to DJ, ANY PLACE, where would that be.
QUIVVER: A huge, glass walled space station/club orbiting earth. it’d have to be be a low ticket price though so anyone and everyone could afford to go.

FRISKY: What is the weirdest request you have gotten from a fan
QUIVVER: Maybe it was when someone - it might have been a few people - asked me to stop playing russ abbott - ‘atmosphere’.. which is obviously a brilliant record!

Thanks to Quivver for answering our little questionnaire. Fans of Quivver will be interested to learn that he also has something totally different coming up in 2012: a rock / eclectic album! Here’s a sneak peak, we like what we hear:

Quivver on Facebook | Quivver on Twitter | Quivver on Beatport | Quivver’s favorite tracks on SoundCloud.

Quivver - FRISKY Artist of the Week airs Tuesday February 21 at 11AM Los Angeles / 02PM New York / 08PM CET on friskyRadio.com